Gordon Campbell on the US injustice that Dotcom faces

Gordon Campbell on the “Rocket Docket” US
injustice that Dotcom faces, and the Bluff smelter

by
Gordon Campbell

This month’s
Werewolf cover story is about the Kim Dotcom extradition
case and is
available here, but there’s an interesting
footnote…This week, ABC television news in the States ran
an AP story about how and why the Eastern Virginia District
gets
to prosecute international cases such as Kim Dotcom. The
story was fascinating on a few different levels. For
starters, it lumped in Dotcom with Somali pirates, corrupt
Colombian generals involved in the drug trade, and mortgage
lending fraudsters. Even Dotcom’s sternest critics would
struggle to credibly equate him with such offenders.

For a
New Zealander, the fascinating aspect of the story – given
how Dotcom is being set up here for extradition without
proper access to the information he needs to refute the
charges on which the extradition request is based – crops
up the headline of the story. East Virginia is described in
the ABC news headline story as the “Rocket Docket”
…Meaning, it conducts fast trials, and gets guilty
verdicts partly because its juries are known to favour the
prosecution.

In cases where an international defendant
could be tried anywhere in the U.S., the Eastern District of
Virginia often finds itself favored in part because of its
reputation as the "Rocket Docket," said Michael Scharf, a
professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland
and an expert in international law. The courthouses in
Alexandria, Richmond and Norfolk have long had a reputation
for bringing cases to trial quickly and efficiently, and
juries in the district have a reputation of being friendly
to prosecutors.

Great. So Dotcom is being railroaded
to the US to a jurisdiction with a known reputation for
favouring the prosecution. (Clearly, Professor Michael Sharf
should be contacted by the Dotcom defence team to testify to
the bias likely should Dotcom be extradited.) More to the
point, Neil MacBride, the high profile prosecutor of Dotcom
and other international cases being pursued in East
Virginia, is a classic example of how the US “justice”
system works, in its dutiful role as the servant of
Corporate America.

As one of his first official actions as
president, Obama has selected the Business Software
Alliance's top antipiracy enforcer and general counsel, Neil
MacBride, for a senior Justice Department post. Among other
duties, MacBride has been responsible for the BSA's program
that rewarded people for phoning in tips about suspected
software piracy….MacBride was appointed as associate
deputy attorney general, a position does not require Senate
confirmation, and previously worked on copyright and other
issues as chief counsel to then-Sen. Biden.

So the
prosecutor in the Dotcom case was the anti-piracy enforcer
for US software companies in their lobbying work with
foreign governments. What a co-incidence. The BSA’s
website is here.
Furthermore, note MacBride’s past connections as legal
counsel for Joseph Biden on copyright issues. Which is
relevant given how the case against Dotcom seems to have
come about. Reportedly, the actions taken against him are a
consequence of vice-President Biden’s meeting with
Hollywood executives. Here’s
Dotcom’s version of events:

"I do know from a
credible source that it was Joe Biden, the best friend of
former Senator and Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) boss Chris Dodd, who ordered his former lawyer and
now state attorney Neil MacBride to take Mega[upload] down.
After we received information from an insider we scanned the
White House visitor logs for all meetings of Chris Dodd and
studio bosses with Joe Biden and Obama. They are publicly
available on the White House website. It is interesting that
a man by the name of Mike Ellis of MPA Asia, an extradition
expert and former superintendent of the Hong Kong police,
was also at a meeting with Dodd, all studio bosses and Joe
Biden. The same Mike Ellis met with the Minister of Justice
Simon Power in New Zealand."

And then quelle
surprise, the subsequent case ends up with Biden’s
old pal Neil MacBride, and his handy “Rocket Docket”
form of East Virginia “justice.” As mentioned, this has
to be almost a textbook example of how Corporate America
uses the US political and justice systems, for its
ends.

You might be wondering how come Eastern Virginia has
any jurisdiction on this case. Well, as the AP story linked
above points out, this is a consequence of Dotcom’s big
mistake: the servers for Megaupload were located in the US,
and MacBride has been able to trace a tenuous link via the
fact that they were leased from a company located in
Virginia. Moreover, jurisdiction can reportedly arise from
where the defendants arrive in the US – so one can be
pretty sure just where Dotcom and his associates will be
sent first, if they are extradited. What a
travesty.

Bluff Smelter in Crisis
(Again)All along, the really important
decisions about the government’s asset sales programme
have not been the ones made by the NZ public – in poll
after poll, we’ve shown our disapproval, and have been
ignored. The opinion of the Key government is also well
known – they’re solidly in favour. However, the decisive
players in all of this are sitting around a boardroom in
London, at the offices of Rio Tinto, which owns the Tiwai
Point aluminium smelter. If they close down operations, all
deals are off – or should be. Last year, Adam Bennett spelled
it out in the NZ Herald like this:

If
[the smelter] was to close, the wholesale market would be
oversupplied and prices would likely crash. The sharp
reduction in power companies' revenues would have a
significant effect on their market value just as the
Government looks to raise billions of dollars by partially
selling them….Apart from the effect on power prices, the
closure of the smelter would see a thousand jobs lost
directly and about a further 3000 lost indirectly.
Southland's economy would be severely affected and it would
be a difficult situation for local MP Bill English, who is
also Finance Minister and the driving force behind the asset
sales programme.

The future of Tiwai Point aluminium
smelter is in doubt after Meridian Energy announced that
contract talks have broken down. This follows the departure
of New Zealand Aluminium Smelters general manager Ryan
Cavanagh last week. Tiwai Point consumes up to 15 percent of
the country’s electricity. If it closes, that electricity
will flood the market.

“How can John Key ask
Kiwi mums and dads to put their hard-earned savings into an
electricity company at a time like this? With the very real
risk that Tiwai Point will close, no-one can sensibly assess
the value of investing in a power company,” said Dr
Norman. “Likewise, how can the National Government
sensibly assess the business case for proceeding with the
sales when the future price of electricity and value of the
electricity companies is so uncertain?

Exactly. Watch
this space. And put any purchase plans for those shares on
hold.

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